


praiseworthy

by naruhoe



Series: the three of them [3]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: (referred to) - Freeform, Corvo also has a dirty mouth, Corvo has a competence kink, F/M, Jessamine Kaldwin Lives, M/M, Marked!Jessamine, Praise Kink, royal OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:14:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25155274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naruhoe/pseuds/naruhoe
Summary: Daud doesn't think he's worthy of praise. Jess and Corvo show him otherwise.
Relationships: Corvo Attano/Daud, Corvo Attano/Daud/Jessamine Kaldwin, Corvo Attano/Jessamine Kaldwin, Daud/Jessamine Kaldwin
Series: the three of them [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1715938
Comments: 16
Kudos: 57





	praiseworthy

It’s painfully obvious to Jessamine that her Master Assassin (now Royal Spymaster) hasn’t been complimented much in his life. At first, she thinks it’s some misguided sense of modesty, but no, there’s more to that. She deduces such the first time he practically flees the bed when she calls him “gorgeous”. Both she and Corvo watch in bewilderment as he disappears, only half clothed and making excuses of further work that needs doing.

She tests her theory at breakfast the next day, brushing her fingers across his arm and addressing him as “handsome”. Jess doesn’t think she’ll ever forget the flush that crawls up his neck, but he refuses to meet her eyes as he greets her (A gruff: “ _Your Majesty_.” that is entirely too polite for the small table shared within the privacy of Jessamine’s rooms.) and leaves a good half of his plate untouched when he leaves them shortly afterwards. Jessamine is concerned that he might be ill, and as such, takes little notice of the uncharitably wide smile that has spread across her bodyguard’s face.

It’s after this disastrous breakfast that said bodyguard takes to, quote, _checking in_ , on the third member of their cadre over the course of the next few days. Jessamine doesn’t learn the full extent of these check-ins until Daud starts avoiding both of them entirely, at which point she corners Corvo and wrestles the truth from him-- the truth _being_ that Corvo had cornered Daud in much the same way that Jessamine had him. 

The most recent of these cornerings had taken place in the gardens, of all places. After her bodyguard had pinned their Spymaster up against a trellis, he’d started _talking_ at him. Jessamine gets to sample exactly how Daud must have felt as Corvo gleefully starts to recount several choice phrases he’d crooned into the other man’s ear in the same low, dirty way that allows his gruff Gristolian accent to start slipping through the cracks. Jessamine finds herself slipping too, caught up by the knee between her legs, the words in her ears, and the sturdy hands caging either side of her against the wall. She imagines the flush that must have crept up Daud’s neck as Corvo called him things like strong, and gorgeous, and capable. She feels herself flushing as Corvo slips from the narrative and begins to tell her a fantasy where he hides himself beneath Daud’s desk and sucks him off as their Spymaster tries desperately to keep his composure, but one of his men is giving a briefing and-

 _Ahem_.

It ends up being a very enjoyable afternoon after all, however, the fact remains that Daud is still avoiding them- _both_ of them, thanks to Corvo’s graphic descriptions and restless hands, as it were. And that is a problem. Jessamine would blame Corvo, if it would do any good, but seeing as it doesn’t, she instructs him to stop bothering the poor man. It’s time that she took matters into her own hands.

When Daud disappears like this, Jessamine is comforted by the fact that there is at least one person who knows where he’s gone. Or two. Or three. Daud’s men, the Whalers. Of course, they’ve long since put away the whaling masks, but there are several that have decided to follow their master even here, to the castle. Jessamine knows several of them by name, and several more from the feeling she gets when she’s being followed by well-meaning eyes. 

There’s Thomas, Daud’s official second in command, sandy haired, blue eyed, and unfailingly polite. Then there’s Rulfio, who is dark eyed and insincere- coincidentally one of the names most mentioned in reference with Daud’s headaches or excess paperwork. There’s Regis, who still looks half a boy himself, all lanky limbs which he still hasn’t grown into and puppy eyes, and Serge, an older man with wary eyes who Jess has seen only twice, and always in close proximity to Regis. She never sees more than one or two at a time, but by process of elimination, knows that there must be at least seven of them.

It’s Thomas that she ends up talking to. Cornering, really, as Rulfio had the good sense to transverse away the moment he caught sight of Jessamine’s determined face. (Not that she’d actually seen him, but the guilty expression on Thomas’s face and the whip of wind as she rounded the corner was enough to inform her.) Thomas is just as sweet and well-mannered as Jessamine remembers (Sometimes she wonders how someone so gentle mannered came to be a hired assassin, but that is his story to tell.), which also means that he is utterly susceptible to her courtesy-heavy questioning method. Jessamine does not bother to ply him with her rank, nor use the gift of her Void-touched voice to gently persuade him. There is no need. Simply expressing well-meaning concern for their headstrong mutual acquaintance, punctuated by the occasional sigh, is more than enough to pull on the strings of a romantic’s bleeding heart. (And for all his tactical genius, Thomas is indeed a romantic.) Combined with his own concern, that is enough to coax Daud’s just-as-well-meaning second in command into giving her what she wants, and he folds like a delicately-stacked card house. She makes sure to thank him afterwards, always very prettily in a way that she is well aware Emily has long-since picked up on and continues to use against Corvo to this very day. 

Thomas blushes easily. The contrast of his light skin and hair against the rose-coloured blush that rises to his cheeks really is quite lovely, and Jessamine reminds herself to later have something nice sent down to the corner of the guardsmen’s quarters where Daud’s Whalers are staying. Later. Right now, she has a Spymaster to catch up to.

***

She finds her Spymaster on the roofs of Dunwall Tower with a cigarette between his scarred clever fingers. He does not seem surprised to see her, merely offering her a drag of the cigarette as she approaches, the prim click of her shoes a stark contrast to the callouses on the palms of his hands. 

Though Jessamine is not as she once was, no. There is something sharper about her, so say the aristocrats who gossip behind her back. This is true. There is something eerie about meeting the cool gaze of those Kaldwin-grey eyes, and few dare to look too long anymore for fear that the rumor that she can see your secrets is true. 

A few guardsmen throughout ended up mysteriously reassigned during the first few months of the Empress’s return to Dunwall Tower, and the certitude she had dealt with her court before is no more. She regards them coolly nowadays, some much more than others. Knowing other people’s secrets is an inconvenient blessing at the best of times, and at the worst, she feels that the faith in others that had come so easily to her before has been all but destroyed by this gift.

It is a small wonder, then, that one of the three people she trusts most in this world is the very man who sent her to drift in the Void. The man whom she remade as her Knife, a stubborn and untrusting man both as brittle and as guarded as steel, a man whom she had reforged in her image quite by accident when she shattered him into a thousand pieces with the plunge of his blade into her stomach. A man who had bared his neck to her and waited for the death he had earned only to be offered redemption instead, a bloodied and uncertain redemption where only death might wait for him, but one that he took.

 _He does not forgive himself_. The Void still whispers to her upon occasion. It does so right now as she takes the cigarette from his fingers. Though he knows her to be here, Jessamine notes that he still hasn’t looked at her, not once since he heard her footsteps, and it elicits a certain pique from somewhere deep within her. She wants his gaze on her, his flinty grey eyes so different from the warm brown of Corvo’s, and yet, once the two of them are together, bitching and sniping at one another, it is as if they were meant to fit together on some level. 

She yearns to fit herself between them, warm and safe as if she does not harbor something sharp-edged and hungry within her, an empty space that threatens to consume her, on her bad days. Jessamine suspects that she may have left something behind of herself, that last harrowing trip into the pale blue Void. 

The cigarette smoke makes her throat ache, but she holds it in a little longer than she should just to feel the burn of it. She ends up coughing as she exhales, unused to the sensation of the smoke filling her lungs after so long, but it’s worth it to see the little uptick of Daud’s mouth as he reaches out to wordlessly take the smoke back, so brief as to almost go undetected. She smiles too as she steps up to the railing, resting her arms against it in the same manner as her Spymaster is doing, though instead of looking out over the city as he does, she studies his face in side profile, wordlessly committing the jut of his brow and the aquiline curve of his nose to her memory. His brows are furrowed. She can tell even from just observing half of his face. It makes her wonder what he’s pondering this time, but Jessamine keeps her silence, deciding that she wants to hear it from him. 

Eventually, he exhales harshly, sending a small plume of smoke out into the smoggy Dunwall air, and speaks in the rough tone that suggests he’s smoked more than just the one he’s currently holding between his fingers. “What’s the matter? Can’t just reach into my mind and pluck out what I’m thinking, Empress?”

Jessamine feels her lips press together on reflex. “You know that isn’t how it works,” she tells him, turning her gaze out over Dunwall. She knows this to be a defense mechanism, the defense of someone backed into a corner, and yet it still stings at some level. She hears him fidget beside her, just the shuffle of his boot against the rooftop, but she waits, willing away the faint hurt as she waits for him to put into words whatever is currently eating at him. 

And eventually, he does speak, though it’s only after a long pause and some more shuffling, then a sigh. There’s the sound of a cigarette being flicked off to the side, of a boot grinding the butt against the stone. The hiss of the hot ash being put out against the damp Dunwall rooftop. “Yes,” he says, voice all gravel and regret. “I know.”

Jessamine turns to him, then, to find those flinty grey eyes of his watching her. The hurt ebbs, eased away by the way he’s looking at her, her Spymaster. He is nothing like Burrows. Blunt where the other man was obsequious, outspoken when he needs to be, and firm in his policies, voicing his opinions when he disagrees and backing her when she needs his support. _Loyal_ is the word she realizes she’s looking for.

Jessamine reaches out for him, taking pleasure in the fact that he does not flinch when she brushes her hand across his cheek, the back of her hand cool and smooth against his scarred cheek, the stubble distributed unevenly around the scar tissue. Her Spymaster. “Will you come to bed tonight?” she asks him, eyes flitting across his face as she waits for his answer.

It’s a simple dip of the head, what might appear a curt nod but in actuality presses his face against her hand momentarily. 

***

When Jessamine returns to her rooms that evening, Corvo in tow just a few steps behind, she is surprised to find Daud already there and waiting for them, idly thumbing through one of the books she keeps on her shelves. He’s taken off his red coat- she spots it draped over the back of a chair against the far wall- leaving him in just a white undershirt and his pants. Corvo’s eyes go soft and vaguely admiring, immediately going to the way that their Spymaster’s pants ride high on his waist, pulling the seat snug against his rear. For a brief moment, Jessamine joins him in his admiration for the admittedly-fine figure their Spymaster cuts, but she makes sure to observe the slight twitchiness to his movements that betray the slight nervousness he must be feeling.

“Daud.”

He turns, though he’d undoubtedly felt their presence even before the door opened, and meets her gaze with those grey irises of his. They flicker off to the side to meet Corvo’s darkly appraising eyes. Jessamine pushes down Corvo’s fantasy from earlier as it rises in her mind, pushing away thoughts of her Royal Protector, the father of her child, kneeling under her Spymaster’s desk and taking him deep as Daud tries desperately to keep his composure. There will be time enough to consider that fantasy later. Tonight is about Daud and only Daud.

Pulling her thoughts back into a semblance of coherence, Jessamine gestures at the sofa, the one that she’s spent more nights than she would care to count with her head pillowed in Corvo’s lap- or sometimes the other way around. “Would you care to take a seat while I change?”

His lip lifts up in something between a sneer, a snarl, and a wryly amused smirk, but he does just as she suggests.  _ Suggests _ , for she is not commanding him here. Not as the Empress, but just Jessamine. 

As she exits that room to her bedchambers, hearing the scuff of Corvo’s shoes as he moves away from the entryway as well, there is something of a relieved sigh that leaves her as she exhales, smoothing her high collar down as her hands go to the pins in her hair. Jessamine undresses and redresses herself quickly, not wanting to leave Corvo alone with their Master Assassin for longer than necessary after their last encounter. But from the sound of it (low, friendly voices and a single bark of insincere laughter, then the sound of the two of them bickering), things seem to be going well. Still, she takes less time than she should removing her makeup, and dresses in a simple sleeveless shirt (more of a shift, really) and comfortably loose pants. She does not bother with shoes or socks or jewelry, throwing on a loose robe to go over the two so that when she emerges from the bedroom, her hair loose around her shoulders, she knows that she does not resemble the image stamped on the coins of Jessamine Kaldwin, First of her Name, more than the second time that Daud set eyes on her, dressed in commoner’s clothing, hair lank about her shoulders and bearing the scent of the sewage-tainted Wrenhaven.

His eyes immediately go to her as she steps into the living quarters, as do Corvo’s, and she takes a moment to meet his dark eyes, to remind herself of the journey that brought the three of them here. She takes in the sharp curve of his jaw, filled out again, and the hawkish shape of his nose, his prominent cheekbones, his dark hair, and the still healing scar down the side of his cheek. Comparing his face now to the gaunt, silent man they had rescued from Coldridge, the man who had wept into her shoulder and cried that she was a fever dream- oh, how glad she is that he is here with her now. 

While Daud is on the couch, Corvo is over by the liquor cabinet perusing the bottles of wine kept there and occasionally sniping at the third member of their trio. Upon meeting her eyes, he shut the door of the cabinet with his foot as he unbent himself, straightening to his full height, which was actually quite substantial, putting him a head above Jessamine and about four inches taller than Daud as well. In private, Corvo has a habit of slouching, appearing shorter than he really is, but when he’s standing by Jessamine’s side, he stands tall and alert, sleek and dangerous as a bird of prey. 

She shifts her gaze to Daud, who is seated on the end of the couch, as instructed. He looks vaguely uncomfortable, sitting stiffly, his eyes having gone bright and alert for a moment as he watched her entrance. Jessamine wonders if he too is thinking of the intersection of their paths. How odd it is that this is where a little meddling from the Void has brought the three of them. 

Her footsteps are soft against the floor as she approaches, Corvo a dark-haired shadow in the background that follows a pace behind, as always. Daud watches her all the way, grey eyes never leaving her face even as she halts less than a step away and reaches out to brush her hand across his cheek in much the way she had this afternoon, asking tacit permission. The dip of his head, pressing his cheek into her hand, is as clear cut as she could ask from him.

She and Corvo move in as one, Corvo only slightly behind her as Jessamine moves in to seat herself on his lap, taking his face between her cool, slim hands as she kisses him, gentle but firm.  _ Open for me _ . He does, opening his mouth to her in the form of a halfhearted snarl as the couch dips down gently behind him and Corvo’s warm arms wrap about his waist. 

It is difficult to categorize Daud. He is so many things to her- to them. He is the Empress’s Spymaster, Jessamine’s Master Assassin. A rival to Corvo, or so he was, at first. Before that, an assassin who dealt in blood to be paid with coin. A sharp-eyed boy from Serkonos. The Knife of Dunwall. Now, Royal Spymaster. A protector. A guardian. A repentant. And their lover. Jessamine is still trying to get him used to that idea, for Daud bears so much guilt for one man, enough that it seems it should crush him. It does, some days. He has bad days the same as she does.

When they break away from their kiss, Jessamine’s hands having moved to cradle the back of his head as if he were something precious to her, for he is, she leans her forehead against his and watches the way his grey eyes go half-lidded as Corvo digs his thumbs into the column of muscle on either side of his spine and kisses slowly up the side of his neck.

“So handsome.”

Daud’s eyes snap open so fast that it might be comical if Jessamine did not mean every word. They stare at her accusingly as she pulls away, but she is still a slight weight on his lap that prevents him from getting up without dumping her onto the couch. Corvo’s chest presses warm against his back. The two of them cage him in, suppressing the urge to bolt that presents itself as the rising tension in his limbs. He makes as if to speak, mouth opening, but Corvo chooses that moment to lean around him, nipping at an earlobe and murmuring just loud enough for both of them to hear:

“Handsome  _ and _ talented. Makes my head spin,” he purrs. Daud’s face still looks pinched, but he cannot help but groan as Corvo reaches around to run his hands up Daud’s front, feeling the hard ridges of muscle beneath the thin fabric of his undershirt. They stop at his hips, squeezing in imitation of what Corvo plans to do when he reaches Daud’s groin. 

“ _ Corvo- _ ” he growls, but that’s as far as he gets before Jessamine cuts him off with another kiss.

She pulls away, a mirthful light dancing in her eyes. “Competent,” she adds, another adjective atop the growing pile. Corvo plies him with another kiss, leaning around to lick into their Spymaster’s mouth in the unabashed way that is entirely Corvo, and Daud groans in what sounds like capitulation this time, hips giving a subtle rock. Jessamine smiles, and adjusts the way she’s sitting so that it’s more of a straddle than anything, her legs coming around to wrap about his waist. 

She and Corvo share a kiss over his shoulder as Daud gets his breath back, a low sound leaving him at the sight of the two of them just above him. Jessamine makes a mental note of what she wants for her upcoming birthday. After seeing Daud in between the two of them, she’s already aching to try it herself, wanting to see what her lovers look like when they’re kissing over her shoulder.

“Ours,” Corvo affirms, bottom lip curling up as he smirks down at Daud, who, for once, seems as if he has no acerbic comeback for that.

Later, when Daud is making lost little noises between kisses from his Empress, his lips red and bitten, and clutching at the pillows above his head as Corvo moves between his legs, a steady stream of alternating filth and praise leaving his lips, Jessamine captures this image of him in her mind, committing to memory the way he arches his back into Corvo’s thrusts and opens his grey eyes to look up at her. They reaffirm their opinion of him many times that evening, Jessamine telling him how she loves his clever hands as she rides him, a hand around the back of his neck as he presses his face into her shoulder, more overwhelmed than she’s ever seen him; Corvo makes good on his promise of sucking their Master Assassin off, reducing him to little more than a trembling pile of limbs as Jessamine tells him in about Corvo’s fantasy of what he would do under Daud’s desk.

It’s very late by the time the two of them have well and truly expressed their gratitude to their Spymaster, and all three of them are... messy to say the least. It is Corvo who fetches the basin of hot water and soft cloths, as usual. Jessamine lies on her side with one arm pillowed under her head watching the rise and fall of Daud’s chest as she waits for Corvo to come back, curiously unwilling to leave him here though she knows him to be safe. There is no safer place to be in Dunwall tower than the Royal Quarters, especially when the two sharing the Empress’s bed are the Royal Protector and the Knife of Dunwall. Even if the Knife of Dunwall is currently stark naked, out cold in said Empress’s bed. 

She continues to watch him until Corvo returns, taking simple pleasure in how relaxed his face is. It is a rare thing to see Daud so relaxed, let alone in an intimate situation such as this, his limbs loose with sleep, features loose and relaxed, bearing none of the usual stress he carries in awareness. 

Only after Corvo assures her that he will watch over their Spymaster, lips curling in a smile that is half-fond, half-amused, does she pad mostly naked to the bathroom to go wash herself up, stopping only once to press a kiss to the corner of her Royal Protector’s mouth. Yes, she knows that even tonight hasn’t convinced Daud that he is worthy or forgiven. Even a lifetime of such affirmation might never convince him so, but that doesn’t mean she intends to stop trying. She knows that Corvo is the same. No, she hasn’t missed the fondness that has pervaded those two’s bickering lately where before there had only been antagonism

It’s exceedingly clear after today that Daud hasn’t been complimented much in his life, but if Jessamine has anything to say about it, she’s going to make sure that changes.

**Author's Note:**

> Haha so this was supposed to be short and sweet but came out way longer than I had anticipated. Hope all of you royal OT3 shippers out there enjoyed it. Comments, pretty please?


End file.
